


Crucible

by Control_Room



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Arguing, Child Abuse, Eska is Randoms, Esther and Freckle are Phantoms, Fighting, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Past Character Death, Protective Siblings, Sibling Rivalry, Step-siblings, no happy ending, sibling angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 11:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18520183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room
Summary: Johan had four siblings. No, three. Three? Four.He never met one of them.maybe he would....





	Crucible

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Random_ag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/gifts), [phantomthief_fee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomthief_fee/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Hiraeth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18422442) by [phantomthief_fee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomthief_fee/pseuds/phantomthief_fee). 
  * Inspired by [Amber Eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16782724) by [Control_Room](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Control_Room/pseuds/Control_Room), [Random_ag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag). 



Johan had three siblings.

 

Technically four.

 

All of them were older than him.

 

They were all his step siblings, three brothers, one sister.

 

His mother had remarried twice.

 

He had two brothers named Josef/ph.

 

Josef, his first step brother, was… unkind. Rough. Angry.

 

Johan could not blame him, they shared a father for three years - he knew how awful his life had been until then.

 

He had gotten kinder now that his father was removed from the picture.

 

Permanently.

 

And that led to Johan and Josef getting a new step father.

 

Two new siblings.

 

Technically three.

 

His new stepfather (his second. His third ‘father’.) was kind (it made him nervous), and he joked about how there were three Joeys in the family.

 

Esther and he hardly knew each other, his mother had married their father just a year before she went off to law school, she ten years his senior.

 

Joseph, his new step brother, was gentle and bouncy and lively, four years older than Johan.

 

He called him Freckle.

 

Many people said that Johan and Freckle were too close for siblings.

 

They were not, they just needed physical comfort, and found it in each other.

 

They talked about crushes (Johan lied about them all) and school and the future.

 

Freckle would sometimes mention “Eli” and fall silent.

 

Johan saw pictures of another boy.

 

It was pretty clear to him what had happened, but he did not say anything of the matter.

 

As someone whose life seemed to be magnetized to death, Johan would always go off to the cemetery. It seemed that it was the only place he could think. After he argued with Freckle, or if he had a headache, or if everything seemed too much, he would quietly slip out of the house and visit the dead.

 

His father was not buried in the graveyard, nor in the city, nor in the state.

 

No, he was buried back home, in Night Vale.

 

Johan missed Night Vale.

 

Josef did not, but what did Josef care? He was already going to go to college in three years anyways. He knew life changed.

 

Johan did as well, all too much.

 

He was tired.

 

Days passed as years, weeks as decades, months as centuries, years as millenia.

 

He took comfort in Freckle until one day at school when he snapped at him for being ‘clingy.’

 

While he understood it was due to embarrassment of having a younger sibling so close and in a public setting, it still hurt, and he spent a lot less time near Freckle.

 

He went to the graveyard more often.

 

Josef noticed this new vulnerability, and he preyed on it.

 

He would wait for Johan at the cemetery, and under the cloak of brotherhood, would walk with him through it, furtively leading him to the most secluded area, throwing him down, beating him black and blue.

 

His skin hid most of the bruises, and the rest he blamed on school kids, or just on the fact that he bruised easily.

 

On the now rare occasion he would seek solace in Freckle, he would wince if the other moved too fast, or if he rubbed across a bruise, or if he spoke too sharply.

 

Long sleeves helped hide the injuries, too.

 

Josef waited for Johan at the cemetery, but this time something was different. His step brother was not smiling cruelly, or too soft to be true, but a genuine, gentle, kind smile.

 

Relief flooding him, Johan rushed to his side, his lopsided smile and stumbling legs met with amicability. Josef and he walked through the yard, a different path than the usual, Johan holding tight to his arm, looking up at him with his red hope filled eyes.

 

Everything was better.

 

And then it was not.

 

A fist slammed into his chest, forcing air out of him, sending him, gasping and wheezing, to his knees. Josef stepped away, and a blow came to the back of Johan’s head, forcing him onto his hands over a mound.

 

He tried to scramble away, but three pairs of hands held him back, hitting and kicking him.

 

He pleadingly extended a hand to Josef, tears running down his face, as his step brother just watched him bleed and hurt.

 

He was curled up and trembling by the time the teenagers had enough fun with him.

 

Josef calmly got off the gravestone he sat on, sending away the others. After a moment, he pulled Johan’s head back by his hair with a swift yank, forcing him to look at the name of whose body he lay above, bleeding and exhausted.

 

He read it.

 

And lay back down above it, whether too tired to move or too shocked to.

 

Josef left - or was about to.

 

A new voice emerged, angered and horrified.

 

The sixteen year old Freckle and eighteen year old Josef argued then, in hyper angred, scalding, lashing tones.

 

Johan numbly tucked his knees in above the grave, the grave of the brother he never had a chance to meet.

 

He thought of what he would be like.

 

Strong, and funny, and helpful in math, kind, a big smile. Cinnamon skin maybe, to remind him of his grandmother. Just as tall as he was, or taller! Orange eyes, like his father - no, blue, like Henry’s. Both, one orange, one blue. A few name ideas other than Eli came to his head.

 

Even as his siblings argued, even Esther, who had come in on the yahrzeit of her late brother, Johan was long gone, lost in a world of happiness and tranquility.

 

He quietly got up, placed a stone on the grave (that was a jewish thing, right?), walked toward home, not bothering to eat, going to his room, drawing, and laying on his bed to drift off to the better world he had constructed in his dreams, where his father was still alive, where his siblings loved each other.

 

They were all dead, anyways.

 

He thought of the knife.

 

He smiled.


End file.
